Ryan stood before a wood framed structure in a far corner of the Manor’s surrounding yard. It was a square twice his height with a hollow interior dotted with protrusions and obstacles. The further in he looked, the more complex it was, until all the available space was cluttered with objects to block movement.

To his side were Joy and Destin. Joy looked at the place like an old foe that needed defeating; his body still and his gaze radiated intently through his mask. Destin stood half-slouched, his expression bored.

“The rules are simple. You can only touch the ground where it’s taped off, but you only get a single step per area. You can use the hand and foot holds however you like, and the walls. You can’t grab the obstacles, but you can push off them. Get as far as you can, that’s it,” Destin said.

“That’s it? The first part looks fine. The rest of it looks impossible. I may as well sprout wings and fly through,” Ryan replied.

“That is a viable option, but that’s not the purpose here. This helps you acclimate to increased strength and agility from ranking up. Using abilities would defeat the purpose.”

“How are you supposed to train your powers? Trial by fire? Just run at packs of beasts until you figure it out?” Ryan asked.

“You’re being sarcastic, but yes. A combination of trial and error and combat, or if you’re not using combat abilities, then whatever is best suited. We can’t build something like this for abilities that would pose enough of a challenge to anybody beyond Iron rank, so we don’t bother.”

Ryan nodded. He wasn’t convinced, but he’d tackle the issue later. He stepped forward, prepared to try his best when a powerful hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him back. Joy had a small stature, but his nine Keys were evident in his casual handling of Ryan.

“Joy, let him go first. Let us not slay whatever confidence he has mustered up. Ryan, with two Keys you’ll probably be able to make it to the end of the first section. Maybe. Good luck,” Destin said.

Ryan gave them an exaggerated thumbs up and approached the entrance to the contraption in front of him. Up close, the walls and floor resembled indoor climbing gyms from back home. The hand and foot holds were a little rough, and the obstacles very angular, but everything was otherwise solid wood and metal construction. The floor had amorphous shapes taped out every few meters. The closer to the edge of the first section, the more sporadic and inconveniently placed they were.

He stepped in and hopped onto the first holds. The holds were smooth on his palms, the wood polished form a multitude of hands before his own. Light speared through his field of view from holes in the walls leading outside. He moved forward. His body felt good, springy even, and as he progressed he gained more confidence until he was making decent time. He alternated between the various holds smoothly, using the taped off floor areas when they presented themselves. The further in he went, the more the course tried to put him in awkward positions, but with his increased confidence he made bolder moves to navigate through them.

Ryan approached the half way mark to the end of the first bit and the difficulty ramped up. Even with his decisive and fluid moves, the speed of his progress slowed, then halted. He examined the surrounding walls, but everything was just out of reach. It was like they designed this spot to force him to choose a poor path out of many possible poor paths, all the paths held holds and grips that were as slick as ice. He needed to remember to teach them about chalk, and how it would change their climbing game.

His arms started shaking. They had been fine up to this point, as had his legs, but clinging to one spot drained the strength out of his thighs and fingers at an alarming rate. If he clung to the same spot much longer, he would just fall off the wall. He had to decide, and it didn’t look like it mattered which way he went.

Ryan picked a spot along the same wall from which he hung where a hand hold tantalized him, just out of range, and leapt with all the strength he could muster in both his legs and arms. He flew up and up, and too far from the wall. He surprised himself again by underestimating his own strength. His distance was fine, even if too high, but he was heading away from the wall out into nowhere. Suppressing the urge to stiffen up, he flailed and twisted his body around to get himself into a better position to reach for the hand hold.

He snagged the hand hold with the tips of his fingers and held on for dear life. His body whipped back toward the wall and he panicked; he had too much momentum. Doubling down, he whipped his body faster. As soon as his foot struck the wall, he used his tenuous grip on the hold to push off. He spun away and smeared his foot into the wall, trying to maintain contact and leverage. Using the last of his momentum, he completed his spin and snagged a nearby hold, dangling, heart racing.

He whooped in triumph, reveling in the moment. A huge smile lit up his entire face, and he fist pumped back down at the entrance, where he assumed Joy and Destin were still watching. He brought his other limbs back to the wall and secured his position, already looking for a path forward. He wiped the sweat from his hands onto his trousers. He approached the end of the first section.

It was understandable why a course like this was valuable. It let him discover how out of sync he was with his own body. He remembered that the same thing happened to him when the wolf had cornered him in the tree in the forest. He had overshot his jump then, and it had almost cost him his life. This time, though, he had messed up by using too much strength, and then recovered by depending on that same strength and agility. He imagined that he must have felt like a professional athlete felt all the time.

Pushing forward again, he practiced his newfound awareness of his body. He encountered a similar roadblock right before the end of the section, and this time he overcame it with a bit of effort and no surprises. There was a lesson there in that while he didn’t feel stronger, there was hidden strength he could pull out when needed and use naturally.

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He reached the section end. If nothing else, he had finished the first section and lived up to Destin’s prediction. It was the only clear delineation he could see in the entire structure. Beyond was nothing but progression of increasing difficulty. He couldn’t find a path he thought he could navigate. Everything was too far away, even after the last few roadblocks. He looked around for likely obstacles to use as springboards, but again, they were too far away.

Not willing to give up, he chose a likely path and launched himself with everything he had, but as expected, he came up well short and landed on the floor with a light tumble. Recovering his feet, he stretched out and forced the disappointment out of his head. While it probably wasn’t impressive to his observers, he already gained something valuable from this course, and as long as he was progressing, there was nothing to be discouraged about. He took a deep breath, pulling in the smell of old wood and steel, and made his way back to the entrance. He couldn’t hide the smile that crept onto his face.

“That was good, especially for your first time. I thought for sure you were done when you reached the first hurdle, but you turned it around. It looks like you learned a couple of things too, and that’s what really matters,” Destin said. “Joy, you’re up. Don’t be too much of a show off.”

“I don’t really feel any different when I’m just standing around like this. If I hadn’t gone in there and hopped around like a madman, I’m not sure I would have figured it out. I can see the utility in having this around to practice,” Ryan said.

Destin nodded and said, “It feels like that all the way until you get all your Keys. You don’t really notice until you accidentally flip over a table, or crush a piece of fruit in your hands. It creeps up on you. The only way to pull the potential out is to realize that the potential is there to begin with. Things change when you get to Bronze, though.” Destin replied.

In the meantime, Joy had taken a few steps forward and spent some time stretching. Ryan could have kicked himself; not stopping to stretch before he went in had probably hurt his performance, not that it would have especially helped any either.

Joy gave a sharp nod and assumed a ready stance. He hesitated and then launched himself toward the entrance. Ryan had expected Joy to start off slow, seeing that the first section required a lot of gripping and leg work, and was shocked when Joy used his sprinting start to launch himself a quarter of the way down the entire section. Joy snagged a hold to stabilize himself, but kept his momentum while his cloak flared dramatically around. He then turned and literally ran down the wall by using the holds as stepping stones and the overhanging obstacles as stabilizers.

Ryan’s jaw dropped. With a conscious effort, he stopped himself from swearing out loud. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a deep breath.

“What just happened? Even if I had known that was possible, there is no way I can do that. There is no way anybody can do that. Is he using an ability?” Ryan asked.

Destin shook his head, “Aside from the basic physical and mental boosts you get from each Key, Joy’s abilities focus on agility and strength, so the passive boosts from his abilities are thus. For an Iron ranker, he’s a cut above the rest, but he suffers from lack of endurance and stamina. There is no use of powers there. I predict that you’ll approach this level too, but maybe not to his extent.” Destin said.

“That cloak he’s wearing won’t do him any favors, he’s going to get himself tangled up.” Ryan said.

“He might be showing off a little. Just a little, though. Watch.”

Joy had shifted from sprinting down the wall to small controlled jumps, alternating between using the hand holds and using the obstacles as launch pads. Every move he made, his cloak swirled around him, the camouflage working to obscure his form in the dim interior light. Ryan raised an eyebrow at the unnecessary cloak swirling, but he admitted to himself that it was at least functional.

The obstacles got bigger, the hand and foot holds fewer, and Joy made bigger and flashier moves to progress, leaping out like a jaguar through trees in the jungle. He was a quarter of the way down the course before he showed signs of struggling. His foot swept dangerously close to the ground, almost disqualifying him, but the risky jump paid off as he achieved a stable position. A few more of these jumps put him at the half way mark, where he stopped to rest.

“For someone balanced in attributes, this course is usually good until around late-Bronze rank. Maybe a bit later. Joy will probably be able to complete it when he’s early Bronze,” Destin said.

Ryan looked back to the structure, noticing that Joy prepared himself to continue. The walls beyond were devoid of hand holds and only contained obstacles that were more obstructive and less helpful the further in they went. Joy hadn’t yet stepped into any of the floor areas, and beyond him there were only a few left in places that made little sense to Ryan’s eyes.

Joy launched himself forward and didn’t stop. His hands flashed out against the obstacles, redirecting his momentum. He braced his legs against other obstacles, launching himself like coiled steel springs. Everything about him screamed grace and animalism, a sense of untamed wildness. There was no more spinning or cloak twirling, just pure speed, agility, and strength.

He threw himself against the approaching obstacles until he reached a point where there remained only those hanging from the ceiling obstructing his path. His momentum fell as he dodged around them until he couldn’t keep himself up anymore and made a last ditch effort to propel himself forward into the air. Failing to reach his goal, he tucked mid-air and, with an unnecessary back flip and flourish, his feet touched the ground, and his cloak settled dramatically around him. He turned back to his audience and gave a deep bow, flaring his cloak out and hamming it up. Joy had made it just beyond the three-quarter mark.

“Show off,” Ryan said. He watched as Joy sauntered out of the enclosure, full of self satisfaction. Joy planted himself by Ryan’s side with his arms crossed, as if to say ‘Beat that!’.

Ryan rolled his eyes in good humor and patted Joy on the back. Joy returned it with his own exaggerated version of a thumbs up. Ryan laughed softly and walked a few steps back toward the obstacle. If this was what they expected of him, there was a monumental amount of work to do, not to mention attaining more Keys. Although there was a ton of excitement in that thought, there was also a new weight of the expectations of others settling onto his shoulders.

“There are a few more similar courses. I’ll show you the others later that are more for strength and endurance, but for right now, let’s get you settled in. We’ll head over to get your Guild plate, get some food, and settle you in the barracks,” Destin said.

Ryan turned away from the course reluctantly. He remembered how Joy reacted to the structure earlier, like an old enemy that needed to be defeated, and Ryan understood why. He already felt the urge to run back in and pit himself against it again, but he followed Destin back into the imposing stone manor.